The Arizona sentinel., 1887-04-30
HIRING FARM LABOR.
Cheap Help Unquestionably the Most Ex-
 pensive in the Long Run.

Cheap Help Unquestionably the Most Ex- pensive in the Long Run.
 The servant-girl problem is one that has been prolific in discussion, but is not yet satisfactorily settled to the minds of many. The question of out of-door help has also its various phases. Good help is desideratum and can command good wages; poor help is dear at any price. Yet many farmers are on the lookout for cheap help on the farm.
 Two farm laborers call on you to get employment for the season. The one wants SIP or $15 per month and board; the other wants $20 and board. Here is say $5 to $S difference per month, or for the usual season of eight months, a difference in asking price of $40 to $60 "a very clever amount, we admit. It takes quite few more bushels of grain, or tons of hay, to make the difference good, if you choose the higher priced man; but have you ever thought that a dollar saved is just as good as a dollar earned?
 Your cheap man knows he gets small wages; he will, in nine cases out of tens work accordingly. A man getting $2O or $25 per month for farm work, under stands that he is expected to earn it; to be worth it. The cheap man is lazy, rises late, if he have his own way, moves slowly, has no interest in the work, and watches eagerly for the sound of the dinner-bell, and for the setting of the sun. He drops his hoe, or axe, right where he stops, and he stops right where and when the sound waves from the dinner horn infringe upon his ear. He is liable to be un- familiar with many kinds of farm work, and does It in a careless, unworkman- like manner. He is cheap help, and does cheap work.
 I know of farmers who employ im- migrants because they can be hired for less than experienced Americans. They sock them out at Castle Garden before they have fairly gotten their packs on their backs; they get them for about nothing, and nine times in ten they are worse than nothing. Some times there is an intelligent man among them, but often it costs more to teach them what to do, than would be the differ ence between their wages and those of all experienced laborer. The objection may arise that American laborers are few; that they will not work at farm ing, if there is clerkship vacant in a country store; but this is beyond the truth, it can hardly be said to be the rule, though such cases can be found very frequently.
 The kind of hired man a farmer wants is the one who makes his employers interests and his own iden- tical as long as they are in co-partner- ship, so to speak; one who has the head to sometimes lead in the work, not always follow; one who has judgment in dealing with the dumb animals under his care, and kindness in their treatment; one who can set himself to work in case the 'boss'' is absent and see that the work goes on as well as if he were at home. We have seen so many men who had neither desire nor tact ta undertake piece of work with out orders. that we place this as most important characteristic of good hired man. Such men there are in almost every community, and they are worth all they ask, and often they are less b0astful of their own work than the cheap man who wants little, gets little. and docs little. r Independent